Pope Francis to Armenians: Seek Peace, though Never Forget Genocide

PhotoPope Francis, second from right, placed flowers during Armenia’s inhabitant genocide commemorative in Yerevan on Saturday. He was assimilated by Catholicos Karekin II, a Armenian Apostolic Church’s autarchic patriarch, left, and President Serzh Sargsyan of Armenia.Credit Maurizio Brambatti/ANSA, around Associated Press

ROME — Pope Francis on Saturday pronounced that a universe should never forget a pang of a some-more than one million Armenians who were massacred a century ago during a final years of a Ottoman Empire, lest it “fall behind into a maelstrom of identical horrors.”

But a pope counseled a thousands of people collected to hear him in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, to use a recovering energy of adore to renovate aged wounds into “a wellspring of redemption and peace,” and to find settlement with adjacent Turkey.

Francis spoke during a request use with a leaders of a Armenian Apostolic Church during a finish of a second day of a outing during that he called courtesy to a electrocute of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians by a Ottoman Turks from 1915 to 1923. On Friday, a pope over from a prepared calm and referred to a electrocute as a genocide, a tenure that Turkey rejects. Historians have called it a initial genocide of a 20th century.

On Saturday, Turkey’s response to a pope’s use of a word was comparatively restrained, with Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli job a remarks “very unfortunate,” according to The Associated Press.

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The final time Francis used a tenure in anxiety to a mass deaths of Armenians, in Rome in Apr 2015, Turkey reacted angrily, recalling a attach� to a Vatican and not returning a attach� for 10 months.

The fear of a genocide still resonates deeply via Armenia. After visiting a inhabitant commemorative commemorating a genocide in Yerevan on Saturday morning, a pope sealed a guest book, writing, “Memory should never be watered-down or forgotten” and “memory is a source of assent and a future.”

PhotoPope Francis embraced Catholicos Karekin II during a request assembly in Republic Square in Yerevan on Saturday.Credit David Mdzinarishvili/Reuters

He reiterated that idea after during a request assembly that a Vatican pronounced drew about 50,000 people to Yerevan’s Republic Square, revelation them, “Memory, infused with love, becomes means of environment out on new and astonishing paths, where designs of loathing turn projects of reconciliation.”

In a video summary he sent to a Armenian people forward of a trip, a pope done transparent that he was visiting as “messenger of peace.” His aim, he said, was to “support efforts on a approach to peace,” referring not usually to a longstanding struggle with Turkey, though also to Armenia’s brawl with Azerbaijan over a range of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Those tensions crept into Saturday’s request assembly when Catholicos Karekin II, a autarchic primogenitor of a Armenian Apostolic Church and devout personality of about 93 percent of Armenia’s race of 3 million people, indicted Azerbaijan of bombing Armenian villages in Apr and violating a gossamer cease-fire.

The pope prayed that God “grant that a people of Armenia and Turkey take adult again a trail of reconciliation, and might assent also open onward in Nagorno-Karabakh.”

He urged Armenia’s immature people to turn peacemakers, “not calm with a standing quo, though actively intent in building a enlightenment of confront and reconciliation.”

At a memorial, a pope laid a spray of yellow and white flowers, a colors of a Vatican, and spent a prolonged impulse in prayer.

In a guest book, he also wrote, “Here we pray, with grief in my heart, so that tragedies like this never occur again, so that amiability might never forget and is means to overcome immorality with good.”